MLU App 2.0: Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning

“What did you learn today?”

I still remember being asked that by my parents every day after school. And often, with typical teenage angst, my response was “nothing”. How sad would that be if it were actually true?

Whether still in grade school or deep into your career, each day brings the opportunity to continue to learn and develop our skillsets. But today, I find the challenge not to be a lack of desire, but a lack of time. Well, my team and I are working to make it easier. At MarkLogic University, our goal is to foster an ecosystem that supports continuous learning – from the time you’re first introduced to MarkLogic technology and continuing through certification and beyond. We’re committed to creating a steady stream of fresh, hands-on content, and the tools (like the latest version of our mobile app, MLU 2.0 ) to make it even easier to access.

Learning, On Demand

MarkLogic is an incredibly deep software product. No matter how long you’ve been working with the technology, there is always something new to explore. The goal of On Demand training is to bring specific parts of the product to life through feature-focused video tutorials that can be consumed in short bursts of time. Whether it’s a refresh on a classic (think security, geospatial, or alerting apps) or exploring something new (think using JavaScript, JSearch or the Node.js API, data modeling with the envelope pattern, or semantic inference) we are producing content to help you keep learning new skills.

But video learning does present some challenges, particularly on mobile devices:

• What if I don’t have a connection?
• The screen is so small!
• Ugh, watching videos is boring!

Through purposeful instructional design and use of our mobile app we’re working to eliminate those barriers to learning. Videos can be streamed or downloaded locally for offline viewing. Tutorials are produced with mobile in mind (let’s zoom in on that code sample, please). And most importantly, tutorials are designed to have hands-on components, with code and examples available to you through the MarkLogic University Github site.

MLU Mobile 2.0

The latest version of our mobile app (powered by MarkLogic), is now available for iOS and Android. And there are several cool new features. First, we added push notifications. This enables you to be alerted when new content has been published, making it easy for you to come back to the app and learn about all the latest and greatest features. Next, we created a quiz game. This is a valuable tool for preparing to take the MarkLogic certification written exam or just to have some fun and test your knowledge of MarkLogic technology. And finally, we’re adding On Demand training content to the app in a variety of languages to better support a fast-paced, global workforce.

Today is a great day to learn something new – make it easy with the MarkLogic University mobile app.